Note the powerful psionic waves emanating from the claw. I, for one, welcome our new crab-men overlords

I know, at first blush, the claim that Le Corbosier secretly engineered a race of crab-men hellbent on the enslavement of all mankind may seem far flung. Maybe you think I’m just misinterpreting the silhouetted figure.

A few weeks later I spotted this drawing by a 19th century French biologist:

A perfect match in claw proportions and posture!

I rest my case.

Water Bus – Budapest

I could have used one of these on my last trip when the bridges were washed out from the floods

Pretty sure a strong wind would blow this thing on its side. It looks amazing though.

Stern Beer – Krakow

Harsh, but fair

This name cracks me up.  Tiara doesn’t find it funny. We leave it to you, readers.

Gummy Walker – St Paul De Vence

It came from a mediocre bistro!

These gummies came with the bill at a thoroughly unremarkable restaurant. From humble beginnings come great things…

Bootleg Cars Display – Czestochowa

For some reason the strip mall in Czestochowa had a bunch of cars that had been chopped up and made to look like Cars. The steering wheel in this one is actually hooked up. Impressive chop jobs.

Cairn – Trail around Vence

This cairn has no fewer than 13 carefully balanced rocks!

Fun fact, Tiara and I have taken dog surveys (highly scientific!) that say we should own a Cairn Terrier.

Bathroom Sign at Hanage Restaurant – Berlin

This speaks for itself.

I have an acquaintance who admitted to me of using western toilets in a squat toilet manner (figure 4). So it is possible Hanage has had these other problems as well.

These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty – Copenhagen Airport

Apparently we couldn’t wait long enough to take a picture before ripping into these thirst-inducing treats

Tiara and I have been slowly rewatching Seinfeld on this trip after hours. Obviously, we had to own this bag of These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty.

Pirate Wine Glass at La Cantine Restaurant – Paris

Yo ho, ho, and a bottle of Rosé

We had a really great set lunch at this place, and I fully intended to write about it. The skeleton chef wine glass will have to suffice.

I have no idea at Jardin d’Acclimitation – Paris

In the future, we will all be cows.

Okay, so I looked it up, and apparently transhumance is a real word:

the action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer.

But I’m still going to picture a parade of variegated transhuman cow-people roaming the astroturf.

We went up on a hill

Proof that Tiara was actually there, for all you conspiracy nuts

It had a fake waterfall.

This is a crazy artificial waterfall

We went into a museum

It had mediocre light sculptures that for some reason look much better on camera.

Honestly, this looks twice as cool in the photo as it did in person.

I also look twice as cool in this photo than in person.

It also had some sick sculptures:

Why doesn’t unicode have a character for metal horns? \m/

I think I saw this on a Pantera album cover

We also went on top of the museum

This time we were both there.

Scenic vista belies 95 degree heat.

And people say I’m a huge blockhead…

We also went to the beach. Mostly at night.

1. Epoisses de Bourgogne

Epoisses has an orange rind washed in brandy!  It is sold in a round wooden box to contain its melty parts.  It is supposed to pair better with beer than wine, though we thought it tasted great with everything.

Amazing runny Epoisses at our first dinner picnic.

Less runny and less orange (a cheaper variety) but still tasty.

2. Brie de Meaux

Bries de Meaux is quite a bit funkier than other Bries.  If you already like Brie and want to venture into stinkier territory, this is the one for you.  It has a bloomy, white rind and is usually sold in slices just like at the supermarket.

This cheese sat out for approximately two minutes before I took this photo. So much melting.

3. Langres

We sadly never took any photos of Langres, but it is a very festive cheese that is typically served with champagne poured over the top.  It is a little less pungent than Epoisses but very delicious as well.  Langres is sold in small cylinders and is a seasonal cheese.  Lucky for us, that season is summer.

Ian requests that I stop taking photos so he can eat the cheese already.

Marseille was definitely dirtier than the other cities we’ve been to, but it also had some of the coolest street art. Here’s a photo dump of some of the things we saw.

Murals

I like captain pickle in the middle

Fishmongerzilla

It’s cool, but I wish it wasn’t so “urine-y”

Bird man is so fat, when he lies around the house, he lies around the house. Get it?

Thematically Appropriate Shutter Art

A number of stores had sweet mural art that reflected the services they provided.

This worked. Now I really want some orange chucks.

Droopy never got enough airtime

What’s up indeed

High Fidelity Graffiti

Most of these are executed like murals, just smaller scale.

It’s the graffiti equivalent of angry birds

Animal on acid; you should hear him play the drums

The incredible adventures of hungry panda and necro-rooster

Low Fidelity Graffiti

Not all graffiti artists are doing crazy full-color work with shading. But they still make some cool stuff.

Sort of Fraggle Rock-ish

It’s Totoro! I just wish the artist had been better

The Missfits

Ontologies are hard. These ones didn’t shake out cleanly into another category.

This might just be an ad. I have no idea.

Not technically graffiiti, but I love the little pigs.

This Pink Panther was actually in Paris.

We’ve previously established that we love musuems. The Centre de la Vieille Charite was no exception. Here are a few favorites from the collection.

Dried Dead Things

Some ancient Egyptians dressed up a little bird like a person and mummified it. I love it.

He looks like a little bird buttler

This next one looks straight out of a certain Tool video from the 90s (Parental Advisory: contains images of disturbing claymation, shitty music).

So metal.

I picture some Egyptian taxidermists, or mumifiers, or whatever you call them, sitting by the Nile on a hot day.

Egyptian 1: “So, what are we gonna do now? We’re at the top of our game. We mummified that bird, embalmed the goat; what could possibly be a challenge worthy of our talents?”
Egyptian 2: “How about, I dunno, A FREAKING CROCODILE!”
Egyptian 1 and Egyptian 2 fist bump. A legend is born.

#1 on the list of things I hope never come back from the dead

Hatception

This is a hat that is the head of a man wearing a hat that is a stool with another man sitting on it. That other man is also wearing a hat.

It’s hats all the way down.

Skulls

I think these speak for themselves.

I’ve already asked Tiara to bury me with sweet goggles.

Tron Pit

I think this effect is just accomplished with a series of mirrors. Either that, or it’s a portal straight to the ENCOM mainframe.

Let me just grab my light cycle, and I’m ready to go.

The drive along the coast was stunning and if we’d had more time we would have explored any of the coves and beaches along the way.  I think if you’re looking for a quieter and beautiful South of France beach experience, that stretch between Nice and Monaco (Villefrance sur Mer, Eze, Cap D’Ail) is probably the place to be.

Our first stop was the Monte Carlo.  Because we were internationally renown secret agents, we figured they’d let us right in.  Not so much.

Clearly there must have been a mistake.  We held our heads high and walked around the bay, determining which yacht we’d like to purchase.

We walked around the point to the Oceanographic Museum, which houses an (very crowded) aquarium and a collection of ocean artifacts that would make Wes Anderson very happy.

I decided that this tile floor would suit me nicely, perhaps for our bathroom in Portland:

We took our sweaty selves home (have we mentioned how hot it has been here?) via the bus, which was so crowded we were the last people allowed on at our stop, leaving about 40 people behind.  As soon as we got home, Ian got right to work making us cocktails that were far better than Vesper Martinis.

Our favorite thing about Nice was that the ocean water was calm and warm.  We spent a couple evenings at the beach, skipping rocks and swimming at sunset.

We also escaped the heat in the air-conditioned MAMAC for a couple of hours, which has a solid contemporary art collection, including a special exhibit highlighting Nice artists.

On our last night, we were able to meet up with my friend Jesse’s brother, Cole, who is a pastry chef living in Nice.  He invited us over to dinner with friends and he cooked an impressive dinner while Ian served some excellent cocktails.  It’s so fun to watch a professional manage a bunch of different pans on the stove at the same time and work so confidently.  It will be good inspiration for me when we return home!

Artception!

A few weeks ago I was fascinated by some Google researcher’s post on how they took computer networks trained to recognize images and tweaked them to generate/morph images instead. It’s fascinating, and worth a read even if you’re not hip to the computer science.

On my todo list is to get their code running on my computer, but in the meantime someone saved me the work and made a website for transforming  photos. You can try it yourself at https://dreamscopeapp.com/

I picked an already trippy picture from Marseille, and it came out looking pretty neat. Here’s the original:

Just about equally trippy, actually.

Here’s another transformed version for your nightmares:

The C4. Now that’s my kind of breakfast.

The C4 was a suped up V8; I’m assuming that’s what they were going for with the name. It’s carrot juice, celery juice, citrus, gin, honey-pepper syrup, and a little bit of magic. I don’t generally go for the savory vegetable drinks (no thanks Bloody Mary), but I’ll make an exception for this one.

Have it your way. The bramble comes with a shot of cassis on the side, so you can get just the right amount of berry flavor.

The bramble is another riff on a classic. They substitute genever for dry gin and add gentian liqueur.  It’s a lovely fruity refreshing drink on a hot summer day, with a little extra complexity from the changes.

We also had to go back for another smoking car. I snapped a video of the alchemy when the sidecar hits the orange peel smoke: